Gambling expansion, a school regionalization fight and a ‘Bizzarro’ addition to the legislature. Last week in Connecticut politics.

Gov. Ned Lamont continued his transportation tour of Connecticut last week, including a trip on Metro-North from New Haven to Bridgeport where he held a news conference calling for improvements to rail infrastructure. He’s also held events outside aging highway structures like the I-84 viaduct in Hartford and the Mixmaster exchange in Waterbury to make his case for electronic tolling. Big topics of discussion at the state Capitol included casinos, beer and schools. And the new state senator from New Britain might have the best name of any legislator: Gennaro Bizzarro.

The big stories

At The Capitol

Gambling expansion: It was a big week for gambling at the state Capitol, with public hearings on sports betting and casino expansion bills and a committee vote to advance two competing casino bills. Many legislators and Lamont are in favor of enacting sports betting, but the question is who would operate the new franchise. Legislators heard from a variety of interested parties, including the Connecticut Lottery Corp.; Sportech, which runs off-track betting locations in Connecticut; the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes, who run the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos; and representatives from Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association, who want a piece of the action (a so-called integrity fee) if sports betting becomes legal here.

School regionalization fight: Legislation calling for the forced regionalization of small school districts was met with a firestorm of opposition last week, including a flood of testimony and a public hearing that was expected to be jam-packed with opponents of the bills, which were introduced by Democrats in the state Senate. Lamont held several meetings with Fairfield County mayors and first selectmen, who are among the strongest opponents of the plan. The governor has said he favors a “carrot, not stick” approach to regionalizaiton, offering incentives to cities and towns that share services but not forcing it.

Cohen testimony: The widely watched testimony from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen before the House Oversight Committee last week “pulls back the curtain on illegal activity and corruption at the White House,” according to the members of Connecticut’s Democratic congressional delegation. He stopped short of saying there was collusion between Trump and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, but did say Trump was deeply involved in a thwarted hotel project in Moscow. “These facts, if corroborated by other witnesses and documents, are completely damning and overpowering in impact,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. But Cohen’s own credibility has been called into question because he is facing jail time for lying to Congress among other charges.

Five things you may have missed

Airbnb crackdown? Rent a room out on Airbnb? It’s possible you could have to let your neighbors know who is staying over. That was one of the more startling sections of proposed legislation to tighten regulations on home-sharing services that was the subject of a public hearing before the General Assembly’s insurance and real estate committee last week. The bill would also impose the state sales tax on Airbnb stays and allow cities and towns to levy their own local taxes. (Airbnb already collects the state’s 15 percent hotel tax). “I can understand the tax portion but how Orwellian to want to know who is staying over!” one reader wrote me. Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford and the co-chairman of the committee, stressed that the bill discussed Wednesday was just the beginning of discussions about protecting consumers without stifling a growing industry in Connecticut. Airbnb stays in the state were up 48 percent from 2017 to 2018, according to the company, with hosts collecting $35 million last year.

Beer on tap: Alcohol bills tend to draw a big crowd to the state Capitol and Thursday was no exception, when the legislature’s general law committee held a hearing on a number of bills. Chief among them were proposals to increase or eliminate the limit on how much beer craft breweries can sell to customers to take home. The current limit is 9 liters, or 19 16-ounce cans. One bill would boost that to 23 liters (48 16-ounce cans) while another would remove the limit altogether. New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine have no limits on craft beer sales. The hearing came as discussions continue between Connecticut’s growing craft beer industry and the state’s beer wholesalers, who worry brewery sales are undercutting their business and business at local package stores. “Direct to consumer is where they want to go,” said Jude Malone, executive director of the Connecticut Beer Wholesalers Association. “How do we make sure that we all grow together?”

Infosys doubling down on Hartford?: Gov. Ned Lamont may have jumped the gun when he told a business audience Thursday that Infosys, the India-based information technology company that is building out a hub in Hartford with 1,000 jobs, would be “doubling its commitment to the Greater Hartford area.” He said an announcement was expected “in the next few weeks.” Contacted after the governor’s speech, the company said it had no details. Lamont’s officer later clarified that the governor was in discussion with Infosys about “possible opportunities for expansion.” But it would make sense for Lamont to have intimate knowledge of the company’s plans in the state. Even before he was governor, Lamont played a role in helping to bring Infosys to Hartford, connecting the company with state economic development officials, working in concert with former PepsiCo Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi, a friend who provided a connection to Infosys President Ravi Kumar. Now Lamont is governor, and Nooyi is one of his top economic advisers.

Amazon connection: Speaking of Nooyi, the Greenwich resident who has been named among the most powerful women of business was named to Amazon’s board of directors last week. The announcement came on the heels of Lamont renewing Connecticut’s efforts to convince the retail giant, which abandoned plans for a massive campus in New York City amid local opposition, to set up shop in Connecticut. Does having Nooyi on the board give Connecticut an inside track on landing Amazon jobs? Not quite. But if Jeff Bezos and company have any questions, there’s a natural connection there now. Nooyi, along with retired Webster Bank CEO Jim Smith, were named by Lamont last month as co-chairs of the Connecticut Economic Resource Center, tasked with trying to recruit businesses to come to Connecticut. As mentioned above, Nooyi and Lamont already have had one success — before they were in their current positions — by playing a role in landing the Infosys hub.

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Republican Gennaro Bizzarro cheers after declaring victory in the special election for the 6th Senate District Tuesday. (Devin Leith-Yessian/AP)

Bizzarro's World: Democrats in New Britain must feel like they’re living in Bizzaro World, the cube-shaped planet from the Superman comics where everything is opposite. That’s because Republican Gennaro Bizzarro (note the slightly different spelling) won a special election Tuesday for a state Senate seat in the city that had been held by Democrats for decades. Bizzarro lost in New Britain, but he won big in Republican-leaning Berlin, which is part of the 6th Senate District and where, percentage-wise, turnout was higher. It’s hard to read too deep into one low-turnout election in the middle of winter, but state Republicans say Bizzarro’s victory is a sign that voters are rejecting Lamont’s call for highway tolls and an expansion of the sales tax and evidence the blue collar city is trending red. Republican Erin Stewart was re-elected mayor in 2017 by a comfortable margin but Democrats seized control of the city council. And even with Bizzarro’s victory, Democrats still hold a majority of the city’s legislative seats.

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Odds and ends

The Connecticut Lottery Corp. has sued its auditing firm over a New Year’s drawing blunder that resulted in a do-over and cost the lottery $1 million. ... Rep. Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford and the co-chairman of the legislature’s finance committee, made waves when he suggested towns that oppose highway tolling (Stamford passed such a resolution) should have their state aid slashed. “My tweet was not a threat and there is no proposal and there won’t be a proposal to eliminate certain state aid to towns that pass anti-resolutions,” he clarified in a later statement. ... Former New York Mets and Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine was at the Capitol Tuesday to lobby for sports betting, saying Sportech, the off-track betting operator he shares a building with at his Bobby V’s restaurant in Windsor Locks, was the best choice for an operator. Valentine grew up in Stamford and works as athletic director for Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. ... Freshman U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District, made the cover of Rolling Stone, alongside U.S. Reps. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “I never expected to win,” Hayes, the first African-American woman to represent Connecticut in Congress, told Rolling Stone. “I thought it would be a damn good try, and people would get encouraged, and then the next time someone else would do it.”